


A Bennett Samhain

by charrrmed



Series: The Witch Holy Days [3]
Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Family Feels, Female Character of Color, Female Characters, Female Relationships, Female-Centric, Gen, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-24
Updated: 2013-03-24
Packaged: 2017-12-06 07:47:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/733159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charrrmed/pseuds/charrrmed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bonnie, Abby, and Lucy gather on All Hallow's Eve to celebrate the witches' holy day. The women scry with fire and mirror to reflect on important themes and events in their lives. Throughout the night, they are visited by their deceased ancestors.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Samhain is Here

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Two years after the events of 4.15.

Bonnie and Lucy pronounce it Sam-hain. Abby and Sheila say Sow-in. Ayanna says Sah-vin.

It is a spirit night.

/

Bonnie stared out of one of the living room windows of the two bedroom townhouse she’d been renting for seven months now and played with the talisman hanging around her neck. She paid her share at five hundred dollars per month. Or rather....her dad paid most of her share. The townhouse belonged to one of his friends. The woman had heard from Rudy that Bonnie was done with the on-campus living experience and wanted a place in town, and she had offered her townhouse. 

The first thing Bonnie had done after she’d moved in was cleanse the place. She’s been   focused on energy, good and bad, since Abby’s friend Aja helped her get rid of her connection to Expression two years ago, a connection that had been forged in large part by Shane. 

Expression symbolized a weird time in her life. She’s categorized all of the magic she has used as a period in her life.

She’d been in flux for the longest time. Natural magic symbolized a time in her life when she was lost, scared, and afraid. A time when she was grasping for as much power as her mind could dream up, even if her body couldn’t handle it. Dark magic symbolized a....well, a dark time. She had found her place, but she had been shaken when the Salvatores had treated her life, as well as that of her mother’s, as a solution to a problem. Not her magic, not _their_ magic. Their lives. The moments leading up to her using Dark magic, she had felt more and more like a walking, talking mass of power. Everyone wanted a piece of her. The Salvatores, Elena, Klaus, the spirits. There hadn’t been a person there. No. She’d been an avatar of magic. A manifestation. There hadn’t been a person there. Only a solution, only an opportunity.

Expression was strange. She hadn’t been looking for power. She hadn’t been lost, or angry, or scared. She had been looking for a solution, a simple solution to a problem that was entirely hers. And before she’d realized it she’d _become_ a solution. Again. The power had felt good. There had been betrayal, but it still hadn’t felt like her world had gone off-kilter. Shane’s betrayal wasn’t entirely what tainted the magic. It was also the source. Twenty-four deaths with twelve more on the plank. Bad energy. Shane had known how dangerous the magic was: his wife had died using it. Bad energy. She’d needed supervision in order to continue using it successfully, and her supervisor was an anguished man who’d made himself into an opportunist who, she had decided in the aftermath, cared more about the ends than the means, the means being _her_. Bad energy. 

She now thought of most things in terms of energy. What kind of energy is attached to it? What kind of energy does it attract? What kind of energy is it _trying_ to attract?

Expression was the time in her life when Jeremy died. 

She twirled his ring on her right thumb, a habit she’d developed in the two years since  he died. She twirled it to help herself think; she twirled it to let her mind drift; she twirled it for fun; she twirled it to remember. The enchanted ring sat heavy on her thumb, but she barely noticed its weight anymore. Its enchantment was impotent on her.

Its enchantment wasn’t needed anymore.

She had burned incense the night before, the eve of Samhain, in order to prepare for the celebration that was going to take place tonight. She had cleansed her house so that any poltergeists, different from spirits, that planned on passing through on Samhain wouldn’t have anything to grab on to and feed on.

The dead were another thing she focused on. How could she not? She’s used magic born of the deceased. She was once incredibly willing to let twelve die to get what she wanted, and she knew she would still do it if need be. She’s killed two men, mortals. She’s walked on the OtherSide twice. 

There was a relationship between her and the world of the dead. And this night would be the first time she celebrated it as a witch.

The doorbell rang, and she jumped out of her thoughts.

“The night hasn’t even started yet,” Abby commented cheekily as she set a silver bowl full of pineapples in the center of the coffee table.

Bonnie turned to her and shook her head in embarrassment. She kept her hair short now, collarbone-length, and she’d put waves in it for the night’s festivities.

She knew Abby wanted the night to get scary. She’d shared with her that she loves it when Samhain gets scary. Bonnie wasn’t sure she was ready for all of that. 

Abandoning her place in front of the window, she went to open the door.

“Samhain is here,” Lucy said in greeting.

It was the greeting Bonnie had exchanged with Abby when the woman had shown up an hour earlier. Bonnie smiled wide. “Samhain is here,” she greeted, and she let Lucy through with her package. 

Lucy’s hair was still the same length as when she’d met her. This night, though, she wore it in a ponytail. Abby had cut her hair completely and dyed it jet black.

Bonnie took a deep breath and let her musings fall away when she expelled it. 

“What did you bring?” she asked Lucy.

“Candles,” Lucy answered as she took them out and placed them around the circle Bonnie had created. 

“Black candles. You brought black candles. You know, we could’ve used those at the Witch House. Abby said a quick spell and we could’ve made them absorb the cold so the house would be warm.”

“Honey, I don’t not want to hold the celebration at the Witches’ House because of the cold, though that’s part of it; I don’t want to be in that house because of everything that’s gone down between you and those spirits. I mean, love the ancestors and everything, but no. Besides, I wanna talk a little shit tonight.”

“ _Crap_ ,” Abby corrected. “Or trash.”

Bonnie let her head hang a little bit as she stared at Abby, who wasn’t paying attention to her. She knew Abby was correcting Lucy for her benefit, but she wasn’t thirteen. Then again....Has she heard Abby curse since she met her?

“And if you’re going to talk _trash_ ,” Abby continued as she unveiled the mountain ash berries, allspice berries, mugwort, and rosemary she’d collected for the night, “Being here isn’t going to help you. The spirits are wandering tonight.” She placed the herbs inside the circle.

“Yeah, but at least I’ll know for sure there won’t be one hundred of them conglomerating _here_.”

Abby smiled and inclined her head in acknowledgment of Lucy’s point.

“I haven’t celebrated Samhain in so long,” Lucy shared.

“I haven’t celebrated it in ever,” Bonnie deadpanned as she left the living room to fetch a deep purple cloth from the kitchen.

“Samhain is my favorite witch holiday. Actually, it’s my favorite holiday period. Never failed to celebrate it since mom started to do it with me, not until.....well, not until I became a vampire.” It’s been a year and it was still hard for her to refer to that period of her life.

Bonnie returned from the kitchen and gently took the pine cones and acorns from the cloth and set it in the circle.

“That’s all you brought?” Lucy questioned.

“All you brought were candles,” Bonnie pointed out defensively. “And I had classes.”

“Candles complete the circle. And we’re also gonna use them to scry, remember?”

“Oh, speaking of scrying.” Abby jogged to the kitchen.

“I bought the food,” Bonnie continued with Lucy. “That Abby prepared,” she admitted a little quieter. “Well I bought the fruit. She brought the cake.”

“Come get it from the kitchen,” Abby’s voice drifted to them.

Lucy looked at the separated fruits: pineapples, green apple slices, and cherries. “Why didn’t you prepare the fruit?” Lucy asked as she watched Bonnie head to the kitchen.

“Because I bought them,” Bonnie waved off.

Lucy chuckled and shook her head.

Bonnie returned with Abby. She carried the cake while Abby branched away from her and headed toward the other window in the living room. Bonnie set the cake on the coffee table and watched Abby unveil a medium-sized mirror. “What is that?” she asked.

“A marcasite mirror,” Abby said reverently.

“Silver,” Lucy clarified, helpfully.

“My second most prized possession.”

Bonnie watched Abby handle the mirror as if it was a delicate relic. And it _was_ silver. Old, faded silver. It looked like an antique. Bonnie wanted to touch it. “What’s the first?”

“A bigger one. Oval and made of copper.”

“The _huge_ mirror in your bedroom? I’ve seen it. Why is it---it’s magical?”

“Mmm-hmm. I use it, and this, for scrying.”

“It’s _hard_ ,” Lucy added. “Very hard. I’d love to learn, but I never....have. I stick to regular scrying: precious stones. Oh, and water.”

“I _love_ water scrying,” Bonnie said. She’d learned it from Aja.

“Mirror scrying is hard if you’re looking for something serious. It’s....well, it’s not _easy_ , but it’s _less_ hard if you’re just messing around,” Abby said. She placed the mirror on a side table she’d moved beneath the window sill and made sure the mirror caught the moon. Satisfied, she faced her daughter and her younger cousin.

“Only someone who _practices_ catoptromancy would say anything about it is easy,” Lucy said with an unimpressed roll of her eyes.

Abby grinned.

“Did you learn from grams?” Bonnie asked.

“No, actually. I learned it from my grandmother: Ernestine. Mom never mastered it. Gran used to say that I have a gift for it.”

Where Bonnie had had no one and had taught herself the craft, Abby had had her mother and grandmother (not to mention a father had never once shut her out because of her heritage). Abby had had everything that Bonnie had lacked. And the magic, their world, had still been too much for her, and she’d left. This difference had been the first thing Abby had needed to acknowledge before she’d been able to make headway with Bonnie. Realizing everything that this difference meant had helped her in approaching Bonnie with regards to what she considered were the young woman’s mistakes and risks. The main thing she’d learned from Bonnie was: they weren’t mistakes, not in the way that Abby had initially thought of them. They were still wrong in her book, but Bonnie had been trying to keep her head above water. She’d been trying to survive. And Abby was glad for that. It hurt at times, knowing the part she’d played, but she was glad that Bonnie had survived despite her harmful absence and despite Rudy’s harmful mistakes. She was proud and in awe of Bonnie for making a way for herself.

“I can teach you if you’d like,” Abby offered.

“Maybe,” Bonnie answered. She was reluctant to try any new powers, though she supposed mirror scrying was more of a skill than a power.

“Okay!” Lucy said with a clap of her hands. “Are we ready?”

“Yep!” Bonnie said. Her hair swung when she turned to face the altar. She’d placed it in front of the fire place, which remained unlit.

Abby hurried over and joined them.

“I want us to do this together,” Bonnie said. “Not as individual witches.” 

Witches chanting together didn’t necessarily mean they were combining their powers, no matter if they were holding hands, and Bonnie wanted them to combine their powers.

She held out her hands and Lucy and Abby joined her in order to make a circle. Bonnie’s breath caught when she felt Abby start to channel her. She smiled when she felt Lucy. Closing her eyes, she reached out and touched Lucy and Abby’s power bases. When she opened her eyes, she could tell by Lucy’s working of her throat and Abby’s hiking brow that they felt her reach, and they felt each other, too.

“Ready?” Bonnie quietly asked them.

The single word charged the room. Linked with Abby and Lucy, every word she spoke was potential for magic, every word was a potential spell.

The women nodded. In unison, they thought of the light switches in the living room and kitchen. Bonnie smiled when the lights turned off, and they were shrouded in darkness. Together, the three started the chant they had planned for the celebration.

_“Samhain est!”_

They gripped each other tight when the candles spurred to life, completing the circle.

Lucy’s voice rang out, reverent and excited, _“Nos invitare Bennetts / Est Samhain.”_

The candles’ flicker turned violent, and Abby imagined they brushed against the veil that separated their world from that of the dead.

Bonnie’s hands were clammy and hot when she whispered, _“Animae possunt numquam morereteur / Est Samhain.”_  

The windows in the living room went up of their own accord, stealing her attention. She heard the one in her bedroom throw itself open, and she hoped the glass didn’t crack. Most of the drapes in the living room blew inward. One of them was blocked by the table containing Abby’s mirror. 

Abby watched the table shake as the drape struggled to come free, and she hoped it wouldn’t topple the table and send the mirror crashing.

Lucy hoped only Bennett spirits showed up. Just to make sure, she repeated the first part of her spell. _“Nos invitare Bennetts.”_

In order to keep things balanced, Bonnie repeated the first part of _her_ spell. _“Animae possunt numquam morereteur.”_

Abby completed the spell, solo and sure, _“Phasmatis Bennett in ceterus pars, nos veneratio quod invite vos!”_

The temperature lowered to an unnatural chill. A legion of whispers invaded the house, tongues with tales that date back to before the common era, voices that had fled and migrated; they wailed, and cried and yelled. A sharp scream pierced the living Bennetts’ ears and they flinched.

Lucy almost broke the circle to scratch her skin. Just because these spirits were definitely dead as opposed to half dead like vampires didn’t mean she couldn’t feel them. On Halloween, with the veil at its thinnest, a witch came closest to feeling death without the experience being completely debilitating and off-putting. Still, one who wasn’t used to the sensation could be left feeling so uncomfortable that they wanted to jump out of their skin.

“Are we lighting the fireplace?” Lucy asked, and she swore she got even colder in that moment. She wanted to roll her eyes at herself for how her voice trembled out. She didn’t miss Abby’s smile. 

“Yeah,” Bonnie answered. “Together.”

“But using different spells,” Lucy said suddenly. “Wait, do you guys know spells for creating fire? Abby, I know you know.”

“Thanks,” Bonnie dead-panned.

“I’m just saying,” Lucy said by way of apology. 

Bonnie really didn’t take much offense. It was only within the past two years that she’d started coming up with spells to create fire. Before then, she usually used her innate ability, no words necessary. But her favorite fire spell was the one fire spell she’d had for the longest time. It was one of the fire spells in Emily’s grimoire. 

“Ready?” Abby asked. When Bonnie and Lucy nodded, all three stared sharply at the hearth.

_“Incendia!”_

_“Excipio lux!”_

_“Combustia!”_

“ _Nice_ ,” Lucy commented on Abby’s spell. “Commanding the wood to burn. I like that.” She herself had commanded light into existence while Bonnie had commanded fire. Bonnie’s spell could’ve gone awry were it not for serious concentration, which Bonnie had been pulling off for a long time now without realizing how valuable that was in witchcraft. Calling fire: anything can burn. Were Bonnie less disciplined, the couch would’ve caught fire, or maybe the whole house. 

 _Her_ spell called into existence something that wasn’t there. She created light out of nothing, no crutch. She had to concentrate on where she wanted that light to be; she created and focused it. Out of the three, her spell required the most skill.

Abby’s spell was the easiest to pull off. She’d commanded the wood, something already combustible, to burn. She’d used a crutch of sorts, another element.

_“Stop runnin’ or you ‘gon throw up!”_

“Damn it!” Abby used her shoulder to block her left ear. The warning had no doubt been spoken for a child, but her ancestor had seen fit to come right up to her ear and scream it.

“Okay, we should break this circle, now,” Lucy said.

They gently let go, slowly, ritualistically. The circle now existed symbolically, which, when it came to magic, was just as good as physically existing. The circle was still in place and they weren’t going to close it until the end of the celebration when they wanted to signal to the spirits that it was time for them to disperse. 


	2. Death is a Familiar Puzzle

“My very own witch house,” Bonnie mused pensively as she sat on the floor at the coffee table. After they’d broken the circle, she’d walked through her house to see if every room was haunted. When she’d turned on the light in her bedroom, she’d found a middle-aged man with thick coarse hair, one of the rare Bennett men. She’d stared at him because the night is about remembering the spirits. 

“Do you remember me?” he’d asked.

Maybe he wasn’t talking to her. Maybe, like the woman who’d screamed in Abby’s ear, this was a conversation with someone else, a parent, a wife, a child, a friend, or maybe an acquaintance. But she’d answered just in case: “Yes.” He made it possible for her to be here. And even if he hadn’t, if he was a distant relative, if he was part of one of the branches of the Bennett line that had long ceased to exist, he still made it possible for her to be here. His magic was still a resource for her. He was part of the Bennett line. He made it possible for her to be here.

She touched Qetsiyah’s pendant.

“Your own witch house: on your turf and with no baggage,” Lucy said as she rubbed her arms. “With all the spine-tingling- _ness_ of a real haunted house.” 

“This house _is_ haunted,” Bonnie pointed out.

“Well,” Lucy conceited. “Hey,” she said, turning to Abby who was eating a pineapple. “Bonnie said earlier that you can make a black candle absorb the cold?”

“Mmm-hmm.” But Abby hoped that she didn’t need to point out to Lucy that the chill in the room was mostly abnormal. There was no taking it away.

“Can you say it, please?”

She smiled and licked the pineapple juice off her fingers and stretched her hand toward the candles. 

“You got your nerves.”

Abby pulled back her hand. She recognized that voice. She recognized that _tone_.

Bonnie cocked her head as a smile pulled at her lips, and Lucy quirked a brow at their reactions. “Who’s that?” she asked.

“Grams,” Bonnie answered.

Sheila Bennett materialized in front of them. “I know I taught you better than that,” she said to Abby. “Samhain, this day, isn’t about you feeling _comfortable_. You don’t invite the spirits into your house so _you_ can be at ease. It’s supposed to be uncomfortable. The chill and the goosebumps and the way your heart trips on itself and falls, they’re all a reminder that what’s happening isn’t natural. That they’re, _we’re_ , not really here, that you have this ability to _bring_ us to you but that you can also send us away, and it’s all because we lived. Once.”

“Yes, m’am, I do know that,” Abby said. She leaned forward and tucked her hands between her chest and the side of the coffee table to show that no spell would be spilling from her lips. It was as if, just for an instant, time had turned back and she was seventeen again. “Hi, mama.”

Sheila smiled. Despite how serious she was about what she’d just said, she couldn’t be mad at Abby, not when Abby could see her now. The last time they’d come face to face, it had been because of Bonnie. And as she’d looked at Abby, Abby had looked straight through her. She’d seen the distress on her daughter’s face at not being able to see her. It had mixed with the shame at facing her mother for the first time since she’d left Mystic Falls, abandoning her daughter, her husband, yes her mother too, her _life_ , and never once looking back. It had gotten so unbearable for Abby that she’d said, “I can’t see her; Bonnie, please.” She’d asked Bonnie to stop, to send Sheila back. Using Bonnie as a middle man, Sheila had communicated with her. Bonnie had promised her that she’d find a way to help Abby. Abby, of course, had declined, mostly because she felt her situation was fatalistic.

“Hi, Abby,” she greeted warmly, happy to be seen by her. Her eyes became even warmer when she looked at Bonnie. “Hi, baby.”

“Hi, grams,” Bonnie said with a wide smile.

“Hello, Lucy.”

“I was just kidding about the warmth spell. Hi.”

Sheila chuckled. “Mmm-hmm. Blessed Samhain, ladies.”

“Thank you,” they answered in unison.

/

“Alright, Bonnie,” Lucy said. They’d moved from the coffee table to sit ‘round the circle. It was time to scry. “This is your shin-ding; you start. Why are you celebrating Samhain this year?”

As planned, Bonnie started her reflection with a Nature spell, one done to honor the dead who had no descendants to carry out the task. First she held a piece of mugwort to the candle closest to her. As soon as it caught flame, she dropped it into an obsidian bowl she’d purchased special for burning herbs.

She closed her eyes and focused on her heartbeat, one of the good things she’d taken away from her time with Shane. Once she was centered, she spoke. Her voice slow and tempered, she focused on every syllable of the spell she’d written; its meaning resonated with her. And as she spoke, the candles flickered in accordance with her words. _“Defunctorum sine semini / Crescat tue peregrinatiónis bene / Estis honorare Samhain.”_

She opened her eyes and saw that her spell had definitely changed the mood of the room. Abby and Lucy looked more serious and somber. Even Sheila, who wore a small smile because of the thoughtfulness of the spell, looked comtemplative. 

“It’s a day to celebrate,” Bonnie reminded them softly. “To remember the departed.” She looked at Sheila. “Those who have died,” she thought of Jeremy, “And even those who are undead,” she said reflectively as she thought of Caroline and Elena. Part of her didn’t think they’d appreciate her remembering them on the day for the dead when they were technically still alive, but another part of her figured they would appreciate the sentiment. 

She stared at the flame of the candle closest to her, and gave her mind to the fire and opened herself to any clarity it could bring from her past and any warning it could bring from her future. “I don’t know when I started to have such a.... _constant_ relationship with the OtherSide. This is the first time I’ve...reflected, I guess, since Jeremy died.” She felt herself becoming emotional, and the candle’s flame climbed high as she spoke.

“I never thought much about the veil or the world of the dead. It was just an obstacle that kept cropping up in my life. I revealed veiled matter to send ghosts back, once; I asked Emily for help, once; I contacted the spirits to gain access to their power; I’ve been possessed; I’ve been haunted in my dreams; and---” she frowned when orange cobwebs unfurled from the tall, vibrant flame before burning off.

 _“Grams?”_     

Her shaky voice echoed in the room. It was the  first time she’d seen Sheila since her death.

Tears filled her eyes in the present, and she revealed, “I am scared of death. You’d think I wouldn’t be because I’ve seen it so much; I’ve done it; I’ve caused it. But it’s like the more I experience it, the less I _get_ it. I know death happens; I know it can be unexpected, but from everything I’ve experienced it’s so.... _violent_.”

 _“And for Tyler’s sake,”_ Klaus’ voice echoed from the past, _“You better hurry.”_

Bonnie flinched and shut her eyes when the sound of Tyler’s neck snapping reverberated through the living room. The others couldn’t see what she could see or hear what she could hear. This was her divination. Still, Abby rubbed her back.

“Unfair,” she continued. 

 _“The only collateral damage is,”_ Damon’s disembodied voice began. Stefan’s continued the conversation with, _“Elena.”_

A fiery coin slowly flipped up and up and up, and, before it could disappear, three more followed.

_“Heads, I do it; tails, you do it.”_

Bonnie’s heart dropped, and she closed her eyes. She fought off the feeling of impotence and worthlessness at actually hearing how the decision was made. Abby knew. Bonnie had learned from Aja that Abby had asked for a divination so that she could come as close as possible to knowing exactly how her life had been taken. She’d called Aja after she’d ran. Bonnie had known, thanks to her psychic power. The preternatural knowledge had come to her when she’d seen a battered Damon hanging in Klaus’ foyer. 

But now she was hearing it, their voices smooth and careless.

“I think death is unfair. It’s unfair that it keeps happening.” The flames pulled the truth from her core: “To me. I think it’s unfair that it keeps happening to me and around me. I reject it,” she said with a small lift of her shoulders. “I reject it, and....I think that’s why I have such a constant relationship with the OtherSide. It’s why I’ve died; it’s why I’ve killed. I reject it and maybe that’s why I’m afraid it of it; maybe that’s why I don’t get it. I mean I _get_ it, but....” She smiled because she felt like a stubborn child, like a spoiled one who couldn’t grasp a concept and insisted in the opposite while everyone around her shook their heads because they knew the real truth: they knew she was wrong, and it was only a matter of time before she learned. Only she refused to learn.

“I guess I feel like I can control it. I _have_ controlled it.”

_“Don’t worry; it’ll catch up to me one day.”_

Bonnie frowned. She didn’t recognize the voice of a witch from the 20s who’d used her gifts to stay in her prime. Mugwort leaves floated out of the flame, and she hoped the words were simply her fear revealed rather than an augural warning. She was tired of paying prices. 


	3. Mirror Mirror

The witches took a break after Bonnie’s divination. Sheila had disappeared, and Bonnie found the thought of her grandmother roaming the earth a strange one. She wondered if ghosts had a nature or instincts like witches, vampires, and werewolves do. She wondered if perhaps Sheila _couldn’t_ stay put for long, especially since the plane of the living was no longer hers. 

“I don’t like those things,” Lucy opined on the cherries.

While Lucy and Abby plundered the pineapples and apples, Bonnie worked through the bowl of cherries.

“Your loss,” Bonnie said nonchalantly. 

Abby returned from the window, where she’d gone to retrieve her mirror. 

“Why did you make it catch the moon?” Bonnie asked.

“For clarity,” Abby answered. She grabbed some mugwort from the circle and joined the women at the coffee table. “Which I always found strange. Well not _strange_ , but it always makes me think of the werewolves, their origin, I mean. They didn’t exactly start shifting into animals because the moon gave them a _clear head_.”

“No, they didn’t,” a gray voice answered. “Quite the opposite.” 

Bonnie, Abby, and Lucy perked up. The woman who appeared before them was short and had withered with age but was regal in her presence. Her hair was loc’ed and hung down to her chest in thick ropes. Her hands were clasped on her abdomen but she wore a friendly smile. 

The three felt the magical pull that told them that she was related to them. Bonnie thought back to the man she’d seen in her bedroom. She realized that she hadn’t felt the pull then. Maybe he was too distant to count.

“Who are you?” Lucy asked. 

“I am Ayanna.”

The English she spoke was old, but on Samhain there were no language barriers. Usually a spell was needed for successful communication between witches who spoke different tongues. However, the veil wasn’t the only barrier that naturally thinned on Halloween. Bonnie, Lucy, and Abby recognized that how Ayanna spoke was different from their speech pattern, yet by the time her voice reached their ears, it was as if she spoke modern English.

“Welcome,” Bonnie said with a smile.

“Blessed Samhain, daughters.”

“Thank you,” they responded.

“So what were you saying about werewolves?” Lucy had been in a serious relationship with a werewolf once. She had a fling with another a couple of Y-chromosomes after the serious one. She knew their origin story, but Samhain wasn’t a night of reflection restricted only to the living. Part of honoring the dead was giving them space to tell their own stories.

“The Lycan people turn into such in order to _escape_ the moon. That isn’t as apparent today because they’re better able to handle it, thanks to their ancestors, but in my day, and long before that, transforming represented freedom and provided peace of mind. Literally.”

Ayanna disappeared from where she stood and reappeared on the other side of the coffee table, with her back facing the fireplace. The Bennetts turned their heads in the direction of her voice.

“You knew werewolves, didn’t you?” Abby asked. Her question didn’t suggest a lack of knowledge. As a matter of fact, it suggested that she already knew the answer. And she did. Ayanna’s information had triggered a psychic hit, and she knew for a fact that the woman had lived among werewolves.

“Yes,” Ayanna confirmed. “Others feared them. I lived among mortals and a witch who never quite looked past her doorstep as far as the magical world was concerned.”

“Esther,” Bonnie said.

Ayanna looked at her, and Bonnie knew that she was aware of Esther’s return and everything that had happened leading up to, and because of, that event.

“Rest assured, I did not take the Lycans lightly. They _were_ a potential threat. But I did not fear them. Although, they mistrusted me.”

“Why?” Bonnie asked.

Ayanna’s smile was one of fondness. “Fear breeds mistrust. Ego was also involved. Ego is always involved with a Lycan, no matter their station. I was a witch; I had power; I could bend them to my will.” And she did. There was one. He was an Alpha, and oh how she bent him to her will, and he enjoyed every tempestuous moment of it. 

“How come there are no werewolves in our family?” Abby inquired.

Ayanna’s eyes widened, though not enough for her descendants to notice, and she laughed. She’d long forgotten what it was like to fear exposure, to have one’s clandestine adventures in danger of being uncloaked. “I do not know,” she chuckled.

None of the three Bennetts knew what the joke was, but Ayanna’s voice came out so light and carefree that they smiled.

/

Abby lightly rubbed mugwort on the mirror in order to increase the strength of the visions she was going to see. She was foregoing fire divination. She and Bonnie were on their knees on one side of the table while Lucy was on the other. Unlike with fire scrying, mirror scrying was visible to all who were present.

“Mirror mirror on the wall,” Abby pronounced hauntingly.

“You have _got_ to be kidding me,” Bonnie deadpanned.   

“She is,” Lucy answered. “You see, when you’ve mastered catoptromancy, you can afford to joke like that.”

“Jealousy looks really good on you,” Abby said.

Lucy smiled and posed, and Bonnie chuckled.

“Will that work, though?” Bonnie asked.

“Oh yeah. There isn’t a specific magic word. It’s about connecting with the mirror in such a way that you can bring the energies from the future, the past, and even the present, into the glass. It’s about connecting to the psychic energy surrounding you. It’s almost like you’re connecting to the plane, this plane, the thing that holds all the possibilities, everything you’re trying to see. When you’re scrying with a mirror, you have to position yourself as the biggest entity. The mirror is your tool. It is _tiny_ compared to you. Whether it’s on a flat surface or titled at an angle like the one in my room, you are always looking _down_ at it. You are an entity, and your goal is to see how the world outside of you is going to turn.”

Bonnie tried to fathom how she could turn all of that into _action_. Meditating might be a start. She’d started out impatient when it came to meditation, but she’d gotten better at it. Maybe if she kept it up, she could put it to use towards mirror scrying.

“It’s a state of mind,” Lucy supplied. “And it’s also more than a state of mind.”

“Watch,” Abby said, and Bonnie smiled at how lively her eyes were. “Mirror mirror. Mirror Mirror.” And then she spoke the incantation she’d written to commence her divination. “ _Animas numquam moreretur_. Souls never die. Mirror mirror.” She waved her hand above the glass, and its surface rippled. 

Bonnie leaned over for a closer look. She felt like her next breath hinged on Abby’s mesmerizing words. There was something sad in her tone, like she was pleading with the mirror, pleading for understanding, pleading to an old friend, pleading for acknowledgment, for a reflection of whatever she was feeling.

“My heart stopped beating once. For a long time. I thought forever.” 

The ripples gave way to an image of Abby seeing herself in the mirror for the first time. She’d avoided it for quite a while. It wasn’t until long after she’d run from her home, from the life she’d made for herself after running from the old one, that she’d faced her new reflection. Her fingers brushed beneath her eyelids. The veins came easily, and she wrenched her visage away. 

“There’s nothing difficult about succumbing to a base instinct.” She chuckled, but she found no humor in what she said. “Silly me, I thought....I somehow thought it would be just like being a witch. In the beginning, as a witch, your powers don’t always work how you want them to. The spells backfire; sometimes they plain don’t work because you’re not strong enough, or it’s not the right time, or you messed up the preparation. Maybe you didn’t notice that you’d accidentally broken the line of salt. That happened to me once. There was a poltergeist on my case. To this day, I don’t know what it had against me. It felt personal, and I strongly suspected that another witch was helping it, but scrying didn’t provide any answers. Anyways, this thing haunted me for a full month with screaming skulls. When I finally figured out a way to get rid of it, trapping it in a mirror, I didn’t notice that, in my zeal, I’d created a break in the salt line. 

But anyways. It was easy to delve into vampyrism, so easy that you could almost miss that it was happening. Almost. Because being a vampire is also very physical. No sooner would the veins appear than my canines would descend and no sooner would that happen than I’d want....to kill. I’d want the blood.”

She had starved herself. She’d lasted for two days but that was tantamount to twelve years for a new vampire. It was starvation. She realized now that she’d been irrational with her plan. She’d thought that she could skirt around the reliance on blood by not drinking it. If she didn’t give in to the desire to feed, then how could drinking blood become commonplace?

She should’ve taken all of the blood bags Bonnie’s friend had brought, just in case. But she’d been filled with so much hatred for what she was, resentment at the confirmation that the stakes for witches in the supernatural world had not changed one bit in the fifteen years she’d stopped being active, and frustration because her mind kept telling her that magic was still inside of her, that she just needed to stretch her fingers a little longer and believe a little harder and she’d make magic happen again. She’d left all of the blood bags behind. 

Her irrational plan had led to her killing someone. Well, it wasn’t the _reason_ she’d killed someone, as killing was inevitable for a new vampire, but she used to wonder at the time if she could’ve avoided murder if she’d brought the blood bags with her. 

She’d tried to stop, but as soon as the blood had pooled into her mouth she hadn’t even been aware of the weight of the body in her hand. All she’d cared about was the sustenance. 

She hadn’t been horrified when she realized she’d fed on the person until they’d lost their life. Her whirlwind emotions had settled into a calm state. Her stomach full, she’d spent four days wandering, and this had included a pit stop in Mystic Falls when, after turning her cell phone on, she’d received a voicemail from Jaime about Bonnie needing help. It was when she got hungry again that she ran straight to Aja. She’d broken down as soon as she’d seen her.

“It wasn’t the first time I’d killed someone.”

Bonnie and Lucy glanced at each other, aware that they’d missed some internal monologue of Abby’s. The latter had spent the past two minutes staring at the rippling surface of the mirror.

“I killed someone to desiccate an old vampire. But it hadn’t _fulfilled_ me; it hadn’t been a relief; it hadn’t felt _good_. But the second kill had been fulfilling. A relief. And it had felt good.”

Abby raised her head and looked first at Lucy and then Bonnie, and the mirror’s glass solidified again. “I think about my time as a vampire, but it’s not....I literally think of it as a moment in my life, this passing moment that’s not connected to my past or my future, or even my present on most days. I once thought I was going to be a vampire forever, although....my plan hadn’t been to live forever.”

After Bonnie’s connection to Expression had been eradicated, she’d asked Abby why she had decided to transition, admitting that if she were ever to turn into a vampire, she would choose death because she didn’t want her ability to do magic to be reduced to a _chapter_ in her life. Abby had answered that, first, she’d needed to process what had happened, not in the after life, but on this plane; second, Bonnie finding her way into her life again had pressed upon her that she had unfinished business.

“I’ll never be able to repay you,” she said to Bonnie. “I know you said it wasn’t a favor, but I’m not talking about favors. There’s something about being a witch, being a Bennett, that makes things appear fatalistic. And it seems that even though I ran from magic, I still carried, and still carry, that mode of thinking with me. I thought being a vampire was punishment for not being a good Bennett, not being good enough or strong enough to stick it out like my mom and my grandmother. And you.”

“Sticking it out isn’t always the best option,” Bonnie said, her voice thick with emotion.

“But it takes a kind of strength.”

“As does deciding that enough is enough and leaving.”

Abby smiled and shook her head. Her departure hadn’t been a clean one. It had created more problems than it had solved, not just for Bonnie and Rudy but for her, too.

Bonnie observed Abby, and she thought she looked every bit of her forty-four years in that moment. She didn’t know everything Abby had been through or had done when she’d been the star Bennett in the family. Like Bonnie, like all Bennetts, she’d developed her powers at seventeen. She’d had Bonnie at twenty-seven. Ten years was a lot to cover for a Bennett witch.

“And sometimes I feel guilty that I can say, ‘when I _was_ a vampire.’ But I wouldn’t want to _not_ be able to say it, either.”


	4. Her Gift is a Curse

**Chapter 4: Her Gift is a Curse**

Bonnie and Lucy reclaimed their place around the fire while Abby went to the window to put the mirror back. She needed to clear the energy from her divination so that the mirror would not be contaminated the next time she needed to use it.

“I can’t wait to eat that cake,” Lucy commented while she stroke the mugwort she was going to burn.

Bonnie smiled. She leaned her weight on her hands and let her head fall back. She felt the pendant on Qetsiyah’s necklace slip to rest comfortably between her breasts.

“Okay, I’m ready,” Abby said as she rejoined them.

Lucy took a deep breath and let it out. She held the mugwort to the candle closest to her and when it lit up, she deposited it in the bowl. “Every Samhain, for a while now, I think about the same thing. _Est nisi unius rei / Phasmatis iter in hac nocte._ ”

“I give Abby a hard time about mirror scrying.” The flame grew tall and a chorus that only she could hear filled the room, a chorus composed of her voice. She sang in curses: a curse on Elena Gilbert, a curse on Alexia Branson, a curse on Milda Troy, a curse on Virginia Marlowe. A curse on Katherine Pierce.   

“Curses are for me what mirror scrying is for Abby. I’m _really_ good at them.”

 _“You have a gift,”_ Katherine’s honeyed voice echoed.

Lucy smiled. Yes, she had a gift for hexing. And she was finally able to truly share it with Katherine Pierce. Anyone who tried to kill the former doppelganger was in for a surprise, as had been Bonnie. Katerina Petrova was going to die on her terms. And until she wanted to kill her, or until the cocky vampire figured out who was toying with her luck and came to her, she was going to show her exactly what she’d bargained for the day she’d trapped her into servitude.

“I’m one of the numerous witches in our family line who have paid for Esther Mikaelson’s _original sin_. I didn’t even know the woman’s name until I met up with Bonnie again. But I’d always known _of_ her. My parents always warned me about vampires, about accepting help from a vampire. They’d tell me that a witch who lived long ago casted a spell that created a plague, casted a curse, really. They told me that that was the worst case of a spell gone awry in wiccan history: the spell created vampires, and it keeps creating vampires, and it keeps creating vampires, and it keeps creating vampires. And as further backlash, any witch who found themselves owing gratitude to a vampire by way of the blood that had been used to doom them, to enslave them, that witch would find themselves indebted to such a vampire. The vampire just had to speak the right words before the blood passed through the witch’s system.”

_“You owe me.”_

Three simple words. Lucy only recognized Katherine’s among the cacophony of voices. The emotion behind the words varied as much as the voices did: angry, desperate, resentful, sure. Lucy knew at least one of them had to have said it innocently, not knowing the power behind the words.

The simplicity of it all boggled her mind. _You owe me. You are free._ Three words had doomed her. 

“Katherine Pierce has a lot of enemies. Katherine Pierce _makes_ a lot of enemies. Katherine Pierce has a lot of people she doesn’t like. Katherine Pierce makes a lot of plans. And Katherine Pierce loves to prove a point.”

It was a point she’d had to prove to Lucy once, just once: she was in control; this wasn’t a game, and thinking it was such had dire consequences. 

“She killed my niece.”

“What?” Abby asked, her voice barely audible.

Bonnie’s mouth dried. She remembered when Katherine had compelled Jenna to stab herself and when she’d compelled Matt to get himself killed by Tyler. 

Lucy looked at the women and tried to swallow. “She had her murdered. She was, um, eleven. To this day, my sister refuses to talk to me.” Her heart jumped when Katherine spoke, clear as crystal.

_“You don’t wanna lose my friendship, do you?”_

Bonnie couldn’t help but ask, “Did your sister try to bring her back?”

“Not everyone deals with death as much as you do, Bonnie,” Lucy said, her voice tinged with a weary amusement. “Not everyone thinks it’s surmountable. I, for one, have never thought to do a resurrection. Ever. But my sister isn’t a witch. She’s adopted. I couldn’t do anything because I was nowhere near home. Katherine told me, of course, after the fact. Calling Suzanne....to tell her why it happened....after she’d called to tell me _what_ happened....it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I didn’t even suspect Katherine, but a month after the fact----”

“A _month_?” Abby asked incredulously.

Bonnie closed her eyes.

“Katherine Pierce also loves gratification of the drawn out variety,” Lucy told Abby bitterly. “She asked to watch. She watched me make the call. Friends are there for each other, she’d said.”

Bonnie wondered how someone so vile could live for so long.

“I tried to kill her, but there are very few windows where an indebted witch is able to use their power against the vampire. That’s why I made _you_ cast the spell on the moonstone,” she said to Bonnie. “It was the only way I could make _sure_ it would work.”

“I remember that spell. It was so strong. Or it was for me at the time. I was weak on my feet for the rest of the night.”

“A curse,” Lucy said. “My specialty.” 

Katherine Pierce is going to die one day, Lucy will make sure of it. But before she does, she will be plagued by maledictions. Lucy will bring her to the brink of death _on her knees_. Maybe she’ll call her one day to ask after her. That’s what friends do; it’s what they’re for. 

She’s going to twist Katherine Pierce’s lungs until it is wrung of all stolen blood. 

And then she will set her free.


	5. Wonderful Things Happen at the Witching Hour

The lights were back on, and they were eating cake. 

Bonnie had held Lucy’s hand and Abby had stroke her back for a good ten minutes after her divination. Lucy spent the time assuring them that she was fine. She wasn’t a prisoner anymore, and she was making good use of that fact. She had a list of curses for Katherine, micro curses and macro curses, and she was making her way through them.

Bonnie was very interested in Lucy’s curses. She had a list, too: a list of names. 

“The Witching Hour is almost upon us,” Abby said.

“You love witch clichés, don’t you?” Lucy asked as she looked at Abby from the sides of her eyes.

“I delight in them,” Abby replied, and Bonnie chuckled as she cut herself another piece of cake.

“The Witching Hour is when dangerous things happen,” Lucy said.

“You ain’t lyin’.” Abby eyed her mirror. “Never leave your mirror out during the Witching Hour,” she said for Bonnie’s sake. “It’s when all witches are the most vulnerable to other witches.”

“Wonderful things happen at the Witching Hour, too,” Bonnie said and popped a piece of cake in her mouth.

 _“Mmm?”_ Lucy perked up as her mind dovetailed into the gutter.

Bonnie’s unwillingness to smile and the tilt of her head confirmed Lucy’s suspicion.

 _“Mmmm,”_ Lucy replied as she slowly nodded in approval.

“You should be careful with that,” Abby warned Bonnie. 

“Very superstitious,” Bonnie sang in Stevie Wonder’s voice.

Lucy gasped. It was her favorite song. “Writing’s on the wall,” she sang with Bonnie. “Very superstitious. Letters ‘bout to fall.” Lucy rocked her head from side to side.

“Okay, make fun. Make fun. But them letters aren’t the only thing that’ll fall if a cranky old witch decides she wants to _getcha_!” She lunged for Bonnie’s ribcage and a loud boom exploded in the living room, causing Bonnie to jump and Lucy to drop her fork.

“Shit!” Bonnie panicked.

Abby threw her head back and cackled.

“Mom, I have _neighbors_!”

“You’re something else, you know that?” Lucy huffed as her heart pounded against her chest. “Jesus, did the temperature suddenly rise in here? Jesus Christ.”

“I’m sorry,” Abby laughed. “I’ve been planning that all night.” She put her hand on her mouth and continued to laugh.

Bonnie rolled her eyes.

Lucy blew out her breath. “Any more tricks?”

“Maybe,” Abby said with a quirk of her brow.

/

“Okay, favorite ancestor,” Lucy prodded the group. 

“Ernestine Bennett,” Abby answered around the pineapples in her mouth.

“Doesn’t count,” Lucy decided.

“Why not?”

“Because you knew her!”

“So? She’s my ancestor. She was a powerful psychic: visions, divinations, dream prophecies. She didn’t use her offensive powers much, my gran, but she could tell if your husband had been cheating on you, for how long, where, and how long he planned on doing it. And she was always right. Had a black book full of clients. She lent her services to many towns outside of Mystic Falls.”

“Wow,” Bonnie opined.

“Mmm-hmm,” Abby concurred. 

“Well mine is Emily Bennett,” Lucy answered. “For obvious reasons. With everything she had to deal with at the time, slavery, racism, _colorism_ , I can’t imagine also having to play nice to Katherine Pierce. And you don’t just play nice....you have to be convincing to the point that you almost convince yourself. With everything Emily was surrounded by, I wonder if she did convince herself, just a little. I wonder how messed in the brain she was. I like to think she was somehow immune, you know? Just unaffected by all the messages that were being hurled at her. Because she was a witch, you know? Surely that provided some kind of confidence boost. But everything around her said that she and people who looked like her were worthless. Invisible. And other messages said that she and the people who _looked_ like her, who had the same lightness to their skin, were better. I wonder if she was able to recognize the grandeur of the Bennett line. I wonder if such a thing meant anything to her at all.”

Abby and Bonnie reflected on Lucy’s words. Bonnie had personal experience with Emily; she still had her grimoire. But it was void of any personal accounts from Emily. Bonnie suddenly found that sad. Maybe Emily had kept another diary; but she remembered that writing was a crime for Blacks in some states; maybe Emily had thought to cloak everything with a spell and the other diary had simply gotten lost in time.

“My favorite ancestor is Qetsiyah,” Bonnie said wistfully.

Lucy’s incredulousness broke the mood. “What?”

“What?” Bonnie echoed.

“That black sheep?”

“She’s not a black sheep!”

Lucy scoffed.

“She was in love!”

“She was _crazy_.” 

“She was _pissed_. Tell me of another witch who’s anger is so well known.”

“Oh there are stories, but _Qetsiyah_ tried to create some hellish plane so she could continue to punish Silas and his lover in the after life. And almost succeeded!”

“So?” Bonnie questioned with a wide grin.

“When people want to disparage our line, they bring up Qetsiyah.”

“Well you should tell them that Qetisyah was so powerful that she almost created a hellish dimension to punish a jerk and his lover. And then ask them what’s the most impressive thing _their_ family line has done. _She buried him alive!_ ”

Abby laughed.

“ _I’m_ just saying there have to have been signs that he just wasn’t that into her. She was so close to him that she was willing to make him immortal, but she didn’t know that he had eyes for someone else?”

“Uh, Lucy----?”

Before Abby could finish her question, an unseen force levitated the coffee table and smashed it on the ground. The flames in the hearth came to life, and the three witches ducked as a red hot ball of fire materialized and shot straight for them.

“Shit!” Bonnie cursed as the fireball landed on the couch. She stood to put it out but was smacked down on her butt so hard that her teeth clanged against each other.

The haunted house turned into a contained hurricane, and gale force winds whipped Lucy’s hair about her face and forced her eyes closed. She felt a cut on her cheek and was thinking that someone had caused it when the bowl of apples slammed the right side of her face. “Ow! Damn it!”

Abby looked at the table holding her mirror just in time to see it fall. “No!” She threw her hand out and stabilized the mirror with her power.

Bonnie couldn’t see a thing, but she yelled out a spell to put out the fire on her couch. 

The force had thrown Abby onto her back and was squeezing her chest when Bonnie yelled, “Qetsiyah, stop! Stop it! Stop! Please!”

The living room was turned upside down when Qetsiyah stopped. The only thing unmoved was the circle Bonnie had created. Abby held her chest and heaved while Bonnie cautiously opened her eyes. Lucy rubbed the cheek that had taken a hit while examining the blood from the cut on her other cheek.

“Mom,” Bonnie said quickly and Abby rolled onto her stomach to see Qetsiyah standing before her.

Qetsiyah was more aged than Ayanna; her hair hung in thin grey locs that reached her lower back. She stood tall; her eyes were the same shade of green as Bonnie’s, and they could tell that she’d been striking in her day. She stared at the necklace decorating Bonnie’s neck and the latter swallowed. She looked at the three. Her words were Aramaic when she spoke, but they understood her clearly.

“You are _all_ ingrates.”

/

Bonnie walked out of her bathroom and stood at her vanity. She shook her head hard enough for her hair to slap her face and then she touched every inch of her hair to make sure it was dry. While Lucy had been hit with a bowl, Bonnie had suffered assault from the flying cherries and pineapples. She didn’t understand why she’d been punished along with Lucy and her mother when she’d been the one standing up for Qetsiyah, but she supposed a wrathful ghost wasn’t choosy about whom to make suffer. Still....

She used her power to turn off the light in her bathroom and then closed her eyes. The strategically placed aroma candles in the room started burning.

Bonnie sighed and sprawled on the width of her bed. She grabbed a pillow from the headboard and stuffed it under her chin.

Abby and Lucy had left perhaps forty minutes ago. They’d cleaned up Qetsiyah’s mess, Lucy grumbling the entire time, dismantled the circle, and Bonnie had chanted a spell to reverse the damage on her couch. A witch’s fire burned hotter than normal fires, faster than normal fires, and was more damaging than normal fires, so the couch wouldn’t be good as new until sun-up.

She sighed and kicked her legs up. Things had gone pretty well for her first Samhain celebration. After Qetsiyah’s unexpected appearance, she decided that Abby scaring the daylights out of her wasn’t so bad. It was actually funny now that it was long over.

She dug her thumb nail into the ridges of Jeremy’s ring and thought back to the epiphany she’d had during her divination: She was scared of death. Yet she had no respect for it. Or maybe she just wasn’t afraid to defy it. Death took, and she, she reclaimed. Lucy had told her that not everyone thought death was surmountable. She honestly wished she was one of them. She knew too much, had done too much, reversed too much. She’d walked on both sides. She’d caused death; there are living dead people; and she knew there was life after death.

No. There isn’t life after death. There is _consciousness_ after death. They’re not the same. If they were, she wouldn’t be so afraid.

/

She didn’t know how long he’d been there. She gasped when she noticed he was standing on her bedroom’s threshold, leaning against the door frame. She exhaled and smiled. When he greeted her, his gravelly voice was a warm blanket that chased away the chill that lingered in the house.

“Hi,” she greeted back.

/

It is a spirit night.

**The End**


End file.
